New Era Approaching. Mobile Web Development and Social Networking.

We have so many favorite websites now! Depending on your style or what site you choose out of the bunch. You could be a web user who enjoys a site’s features or non web users that knows a handful of sites by memory, even if they never visited.  The population of internet users grows as the computer has now placed itself as a significant part of our lives, especially the youth.  The net is growing with more web devices readily available… from cellular companies, faster connections, and easier access with wi-fi or even 3g. Broadband wireless cards have became more popular with the price drops and more smartphones are acting like our home computers. This is all leading to a wave about to hit, mobile web development.

It seems simple to develop, if your thinking a small cell phone screen to view a web page, but actually a difficult task to perfect let alone perform, which everyone wanting to build to secure and dependable site for mobile carriers. The problem is every company in the cellular world is battling in being the best, offering different features to compete, being the first to have a better web experience, or just do not have the technology to offer all this. Web developers are struggling in finding a way to format their content for every phone. There is few sites that will show up on every phone the same way, although accomplishments have been made. An average website can be formatted for major browsers in recent times, but years ago it was more difficult.   Now with better software, we can test the major platforms of these built pages and how sites will show up, however we don’t know if this will stay around for long. There’s just a rapid growth and many formats developing from new technology.  Take Adobe for instance.  Their programs are hundreds of dollars, which performs functions within the graphic design industry.  To a fine artist, this will seem remarkable as many programs will be needed to perform all the “desired functions.”  From Photoshop with images, Illustrator to make a vector graphic, Flash to animated, to Dreamweaver, and the list goes on.  Speaking from growing up in poverty, this is an expensive field to enter.  However, you have the possibility of being the best with these tools.  They empower the user and make them near professional, well should i say able to produce on their own, great stuff.  Web development, even programming in general, is evolving, by sharing the knowledge and skill to anyone who wants it.  Sites are sharing information and linking codes to help developers become better, in API’s, better content management systems, and more.

To get back to the web development war, there’sh no true leader in popular mobile sites, as each day has potential of being an amazing site, that could steal the show(even affect the market). With knowledge and skill, this is the only obstacle in being the best of the mobile world.  Myspace, MTV, and ebay are developing some great content for mobile devices and have the money, power, and skills to do it. Average websites have grown to use coding that runs similar to code for software or databasing. The way to build is not just from this code as many web building software allows you to make a page with little skill, with simple features similar to Microsoft Word. These editors will make the average person interested in developing a website, personally, its kinda fun and takes less time to build. Joomla and AJAX or even others, have tried to set a standard in which I don’t see why not just use wordpress like this blog. Businesses want an easy way to update their sites and less confusion in the process. Thats why they stick to these techniques rather than get advanced in skill. I don’t blame them and I’ve seen it work wonders for companies from saving money to less time consumption.

For my future goals, I aim for perfection or atleast to better myself in the art of web development and online marketing. I started with web design or art rather, but then into business to make money, and then put the understanding of people in the mixed while learning how to do my own marketing & advertising. Now, luckily, it has all came together, with the social boom and computers. I work to find a way to connect people, look good, and provide benefit to keep the process ongoing. With mobile web, we look at a young market, school kids with cell phones and computer access. Developing the next big social networking site will require understanding of each mobile platform. Apple iphone’s are unique and probably the best market, with these consumers in a higher bracket of income and spend alot more time with other electronical devices. I think we could stick to the html for visual. I have been tempted plenty of times to pull up a website I just created, and view on my Tmobile Sidekick to see how it looks. Sometimes it’s crazy and distorted, other times it’s still aligned correctly, but not because I told it to do that. Its all about getting control and planning.

Building for web could be simple, with merely html code with colors, fonts, & pictures. Everyone should develop one if they have a site, atleast telling a visitor of a website that they need to view on a PC. I guess everyone want that perfection or doesn’t want to give a hint at a perfected version. I have came to the point of mobile web development that more web2.0 or interactivity by users should be implemented. Having comment boxes, uploading pictures, or even downloading is troublesome, with no guarantee on if it will even work on certain phones. As soon as comments or more functionality features across multiple phone types arises, we will see a growth. For now, we wait… as more web devices are owned by generation x. The tech era is here. The “what” in the future is known, but “how” will be the question. As I study more social interaction of mobile web development, I will report back to this blog with a more educated guess of the future in the mobile world.

Learn more about mobile web development below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4dV9nIpHes]

World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards Learning Resource for Web Development